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groos

The term 'Voluntary Exit Offer' reminds me of the suicide drug Quietus in P.D. James' Children of Men, which the government offers to people who no longer wish to live.
30% was the quoted number for the acceptance rate of the earlier VRP, which was mostly long tenured employees who were at retirement age, or close to it. I would be surprised if this gets a significant acceptance from the younger employees. OTOH, older employees who didn't accept the earlier VRP and were regretting that decision may jump at this offer.
Re:The result of the C++26 DIS ballot on Monday October 26, 2026 @04:33AM (#50240817)
C++ is probably the largest, most complex programming language to ever exist. I, as a former C++ compiler developer, find it hard to keep up with the language changes. What chance does an average user have?
Unfortunate choice of name.
The way to deal with a bad HOA is to get on the board. Normally, HOA boards attract the most petty minded people because most of the normal people living in the community are too busy but if a bunch of like-minded people get on the board, they can bring sanity back.
They also have a manual, non motorized version. I am building this currently for eventual use, with modifications, in a point diffraction interferometer.

https://youtu.be/-mgqq0qdDRM?is=nFvtZprNsjMn3D_B

Most of the US West of the Missisipi is still largely dark.

https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=3.68&lat=40.8496&lo...

Having access to dark skies doesn't mean you automatically appreciate them. I suspect this may be one reason we lost them so easily. As I child, I grew up at 5000+ ft with dark skies and the Milky Way was often visible. Funnily, no one seemed to be aware of it. Once I learned what it was (from a magazine), I pointed it out to a grown up and they dismissed it immediately as a cloud. Much later I learned that clouds from dark sites look dark, not light.

I just came back from a trip to Yellowstone, staying at an RV Park in Idaho that had designated themselves as a dark sky RV park, which mean no external lights after 10pm. The night sky was glorious with the Milky Way visible almost from horizon to horizon. I wish more city dwellers could experience this so we could do something to tame the completely unncessary and wasteful light pollution.

Re:How Delhi cut electricity loss from 50 to 5 percent on Tuesday September 29, 2026 @12:32PM (#49896074)
The effort to reduce electricity theft has had an interesting side effect. One of the ways to prevent theft is to insulate the power lines going into neighborhoods. This also makes them safe for monkeys to use as 'roads' with the result that roving gangs of monkeys move from neighborhood to neighborhood with ease and also have access to the upper floor of apartment buildings because of the proximity of the power lines. I saw this in person a few years ago.
Re:"The Secret Life of Circuits" is here on Saturday September 19, 2026 @11:12AM (#49767211)
The PDF no longer appears to be there or at least is well hidden.
Re:AirPods 5 on Wednesday September 09, 2026 @01:51PM (#49630478)
Is that you, Shrek?
Re:An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation on Wednesday August 26, 2026 @04:28PM (#49455399)
The Bambu Labs mobile app doesn't work with LAN mode. I found this app for Android, "LanBu" which does a decent enough job. It's still in beta and wants to display ads. So far my PiHole has blocked all its ads so it's tolerable. I wouldn't mind paying for it, if it's a one-time free and it allowed access from outside my LAN.
This is a bad take. When the stste is either unable or unwilling to offer security, what is the alternative? The 'vigilantes' are doing the honorable thing, protecting their communities from criminals and oppressors. I wish them all good luck as it seem like they need it.

The danger always is that these militias can themselves become corrupt and oppress their own people.

Re:The Dark Night of Mathematics on Saturday July 25, 2026 @05:41PM (#49051878)
Have LLMs produced something novel like Cantor's diagonalization procedure once was? Come up with new concepts like set theory once was and axiomatized it? Is there any indication or evidence LLMs can do this? If not, I would wager mathematicians are still going to be a profession in the future. Maybe not as theorem provers in a particular axiomatized system where LLMs can be effective tools but the wider project of synthesis and unification, and the discovery of new modes of mathematical thought will still require mathematicians.
I read through most of the article but didn't see motion sensors mentioned. A lot of suburban streetlights are lighting up empty streets at night. With a combination of motion sensing and LEDs, lighting could follow pedestrians. Cars really don't need street lights in most cases but even then, in higher risk areas, motion sensors could turn on streetlights just as long as needed.
Re:The Zilog Z80 has turned 50 on Friday July 17, 2026 @07:08PM (#48953223)
35 years ago I had to program a Z80 by "assembling" programs by hand and punching hexcodes into a board. This was made easier by writing an assembler for it. This was my way into tools which took me eventually to working on a major C++ compiler.
Re:crustc: entirety of `rustc`, translated to C on Thursday July 02, 2026 @08:29PM (#48769179)
As an ex C++ compiler developer, I heartily approve of this project. Kudos.
Re:How does a pull-back car work? Illustrated teardown on Tuesday June 30, 2026 @05:09PM (#48739230)
Love this site! Well done!
Re:A History of Menus Is a Menu of History on Saturday June 27, 2026 @04:43PM (#48701582)
How many people visited the site expecting program UI menus?
Re:What is a Lithium-ion capacitor? on Friday June 26, 2026 @06:03PM (#48692562)
Not really as large capacity capacitors (this one seems to be 4V) tend to be low voltage as well. You can touch the terminals without harm but attempting to short them is going to be, er, entertaining. I have accidentally touched a 200V capacitor and it was not fun.
Nice but pricey with a restrictive license.
I call all these new fonts monofonts, mono in the sense of monoculture. Aesthetics practically indistinguishable from each other. Give me one of the IBM Selectric fonts in a modern form and I'll be happy as a clam.
Re:Migrating from GNU Stow to Chezmoi on Thursday June 18, 2026 @03:04PM (#48589955)
~50 years of distributed systems research and this is a problem we still have to deal with today. Sad!
Every country? No. Every European country? Yes.
They can ban immigration from the third world all they want but at some point, they'll have to confront the economic reality of a 1.42/couple fertility rate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden

It was a supergiant, hence died at a young age, and unlikely to have evolved life of any kind in its system.
Re:Appearing productive in the workplace on Thursday May 07, 2026 @02:25PM (#48052930)
Again, note that I said "work through" and not "read". Reading code is shallow. Debugging it, modifying it, inserting diagnostic code, etc. is not.
'People' in this case were Don Knuth (TeX) and Leslie Lamport (LaTeX). Both are Turing Award winners.
Re:Appearing productive in the workplace on Thursday May 07, 2026 @09:52AM (#48049482)
You missed the point - understanding comes from working through the code, not just reading it. This is nothing new: nobody has learned or done new mathematics or physics or whatever by just reading a textbook.
Re:Appearing productive in the workplace on Wednesday May 06, 2026 @08:47PM (#48044021)
During the last few months when AI usage was mandated in our team and usage exploded, our team's throughput has barely changed. Now, if this was due to people working 2 hours a day and painting, cooking and playing golf the rest of the day, this would be a great result, but I see many people work past 6pm, and yet the output is mostly the same. We are not tackling harder problems or fixing more bugs despite authoring numerous skills for AI. Eventually the reckoning is sure to come, and I think it will not be pretty.

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